Trump administration officials are hurrying to catch up to the president’s audacious and improbable plan for the United States to take ownership of Gaza and redevelop it into a “Middle Eastern Riviera,

U.S. President Donald Trump’s statement that he wants to “ clean out ” Gaza raised alarm in many quarters, but perhaps nowhere more so than in Jordan. On a Jan. 25 call, Trump pressured Jordanian King Abdullah II to take in many more Palestinian refugees in what would amount to a de facto ethnic cleansing of Gaza.

Once a critic of nation building, the president now envisions taking over a Middle East enclave, driving out its Palestinian population and transforming it into “the Riviera of the Middle East.”